Hope you don't mind me interloping. The little Collector's Edition 'camera gizmo' that lets you take screenshots from your character's perspective is pretty cool. Much more fun than I anticipated in terms of getting a different kind of screenshot, and it removes everything from the HUD in the screenies. BTW, the game saves screenshots in a DOCUMENTS>SWTOR folder.

*Technically, Otro (Trooper>Vanguard) was our "tank" but he had no taunt per se. Bregom took something of a pounding despite Scoundrel Kim's efforts to heal him.

*I tried my best to stun stuff but asking Troopers not to blast everything in sight is like asking Han Solo to be subtle.

The Sith Infiltrator is a nasty Inquisitor type who drops a lot of lighting attacks.

I compiled some really fun video footage from a couple nice Heroic4 groups I was on (Enemies of the Republic, Fall of the Locust), both in the mid to upper teen levels. I don't think the footage really spoils anything of note.

And now we present...

4-Player Heroic Quests in Star Wars: The Old Republichttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7HELRGSlZA*As with my other gameplay vids, it's 720HD, and you might fiddle with the icons that enlarge the screen a bit. Full screen is OK but a bit smeary for my tastes even though it was originally 1920X1080.

Here's a few more holocamera pix. I must be batting like .150 in terms of getting nice shots using it, but I'll try to get better. I liked these but just deleted about a dozen or so out of the screenshot directory.

Corso copes with some beasties in Taris. I really need to remember to get him a helmet from the auction house, I keep forgetting!

An NPC's flame gun thingie...

Mustaine, a Jedi Guardian, in action in the Total Elimination 4-Heroic.

After our group of 4 (2 Gunslingers, Jedi Guardian, Commando) wiped on the end boss repeatedly, Mustaine had the idea of sort of leading it in a circle around a thick stone pillar. This kept the droid from being able to really pummel the rest of us though it did require us gunslingers to do a lot of dancing in and out of cover in order to get clear shots.

A Pew Research Center poll found nearly half of Americans hold the false belief that TARP was passed under President Obama, while only 34 percent know it originated under Bush."Oh yeah?" Bush replied. "50% of the people were wrong."

Pretty cool Mandalore Flashpoint group I was on: Smuggler>Gunslinger, Trooper>Vanguard and a couple Jedi. Only time we stood still long enough for me to get a group shot.

We almost broke down over repeated deaths with a nasty boss mob late-midway, but regrouped, talked about it, and progressed. The key seemed to be to take down a couple of major bosses, and in this case, even though we wiped, when we got back, only their underlings were left. And yeah, Scruffy Nerf-herders is the best SWTOR guild name ever imho. Wish I'd thought of it.

Thanks to the fella here posting the tip about the droid being usable as a healer, I've been doing that a lot. I kick myself I didn't keep the droid part rewards over time though. Although he has a pistol slot on his character panel, I don't think he can equip one. He can equip motor, core, offhand etc.

The odd thing is you have to set up C2 in 'attack' mode (in passive, he won't heal anybody). In modest battles he doesn't seem to help much. When things get furious though, he (it?) seems to do a better job of using his various healing abilities. Although he has no attack skills, he insists on trying to beat on things. I don't remember C3PO doing that, do you?

"Let the wookie win." *Bowdaar uses a vibroblade and is a decent tank (takes a decent amount of damage, soaking it up a bit better than Corso imho). More importantly, he won't keep grappling targets no matter how often you disable the skill (he doesn't have that thankfully). He charges at targets, and his dialogue (in subtitles) indicates he wants MORE!

Think I had a StarWarsGasm when I realized I'd finally get him as a companion. Probably got him a bit later than I should've cause I was trying to quest as much as I could in that zone to stock on cr for the mount. Most of us don't speak "Wookie," so you need to pay attention (another reason I'd like chat balloons some day) to the general chat window to see what Bowdaar is actually saying to you. I enjoyed his storyline leading up to him joining you.

*I have this silly vision of a music video with me running around with my wookie, some sort of hokey song playing...

*I admit that this current armor I'm wearing (modifiable, with excellent stats) makes Blackjack look more like a cross between Sky Captain and The Shadow, than Han Solo, but that's fine by me.

Stop the presses! We got a guild team together! We did quite a bit of questing in Tatooine. Maybe a bit below our level, but still fun.

*I must say, the Trooper's healer NPC is terrific -- stays well back, heals players aggressively, takes a few shots with a blaster pistol. I just can't get my stupid droid to much more than bash on things hopelessly with his fists (in passive mode, he won't heal at all; in attack mode he thinks he's a boxer), and he isn't much use as healer unless you micro-manage him.

Action Movie Pose. Actually, we're just resting here.

My holo self. Saves a lot of time, and is helpful if you kinda get separated from the group and don't know where to go (as with the case here; I figured it out later).

We still got excellent exp, and built up the cr in the course of questing. Still found some of the quest rewards useful for me or my companion. Hit 29.

I've resisted the "sexier" Gunslinger skills at this point in favor of doling points into things like higher % cunning (the key Smuggler stat affecting ranged attacks, criticals, all sorts of modifiers) and Alacrity (supposedly reduces attacks that require time to trigger [like charge burst]).

Got a really welcome attack skill (even if my mind can hardly track this many hotkeys) called Flourish that debuffs target armor 20% for 45 seconds, which is precious against tougher enemies. And a melee skill called "Cheap Shot" that lets you do tremendous damage but only works if the target is incapacitated (stunned).

I keep seeing references to the droid healer companion. C2-N2 is not intended to be a combat companion. The fact that he can be taken out and does some healing is deceiving. He is not a full fledged companion. His intention is purely for crafting to be honest.

I keep seeing references to the droid healer companion. C2-N2 is not intended to be a combat companion. The fact that he can be taken out and does some healing is deceiving. He is not a full fledged companion. His intention is purely for crafting to be honest.

The Tatooine Royal Navy (Qt3 Republic Guild) took him healing on a Flashpoint and he mostly did okay. He takes almost all the same gear as T7 (the Jedi Knight Companion) so I transferred all of T7's equipment over for the Flashpoint. He certainly does put out heals, and he seems fairly survivable (caveat -- I've got some pretty good equipment). The main problem I've seen with him is the one Blackjack referenced -- he has a tendency to wander off and start beating on mobs that no one else is attacking, instead of concentrating on our targets or better yet just hanging back and concentrate on healing.

I'm sure he's no match for a full healer companion, but we found he did work in a pinch.

I keep seeing references to the droid healer companion. C2-N2 is not intended to be a combat companion. The fact that he can be taken out and does some healing is deceiving. He is not a full fledged companion. His intention is purely for crafting to be honest.

I just find it annoying C2 has a pistol slot and I can't, afik, equip a pistol in it. So why give him a slot, Bioware? The trooper's healer companion shows there's no klutzy AI limitation that makes C2 as useless as he is as a healer (generally), they presumably just purposely made him that way. I guess I'm just curious -- do all other classes get that same C2 droid as companion #2?

I may be playing your game 16 hours a day, but I can still complain about things, Bioware!

Point taken -- I'm sticking with Corso and Bowdaar the Wookie but in spite of constant armor upgrading, both are collapsing like a ton of bricks in most situations involving tougher enemies (I've seen a type of health pack that heals both you and your companion, forgot where). I can see looking at my Smuggler Skills Trainer's future offerings there's a tweak to Cool Head skill that will finally give BJ a substantial self-heal, and also a force field (separate from portable cover) that's supposed to work for something like 15 seconds.

I was thinkin' I rarely get shots of Blackjack the Gunslinger simply gunslinging, so here's a few from a Heroic4 in Tatooine last night. btw., Tatooine is almost glutted with 2 and 4 player Heroics. Actually it's happily glutted with every type of quest -- at times our quest trackers were screaming Uncle last night.

Firing a spread.

Pew pew pew!

Kapow!

While at some point I'd like to move on from the Sky Captain/The Shadow look, you know what? It's unique. I never run into other smugglers that look like this since most probably didn't do the Heroics that I got it off the other day. So maybe it's not a bad thing.

Eventually on this one I had to "kite-smuggler tank" the end boss cause our Jedi died and the Vanguard and Scoundrel didn't do enough damage to aggro. So I ran in circles firing off flurry. It was comical (Run, Forrest, run!), but it worked...

Some companion pix:You do eventually get to interact with your companions as a group aboard your ship. I kinda wish we could also selectively disable helmet visuals on companions -- if we could, I'd probably disable Corso's and Risha's (Wookies don't seem to change visually except maybe with belts). "Blackjack Blackjack" seems silly (Legacy surname choice), but I figured I'd want that in my nameplate and folks that know me by that ID would see it's me. I've run into a couple other players doing the same.

Risha's pretty awesome DPS wise. For whatever reason (she has no special "anti-aggro" skill), she almost never seems to draw any aggro from targets when we're fighting together (Corso almost always does, grappling hook or no). In the mid 30s, I switch quite a bit between Risha and the wookie, depending on the situation. While she's basically a smuggler that can use a sniper rifle, her skills include a poison grenade, a rapid-fire machine gun like skill, and a rifle butt melee attack.

Blackjack's orange-item laser blasters at 33. The long one (which wouldn't look out of place in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western) I believe was from completion of Tatooine's bonus quests, or maybe it was completing a Heroic4. The melee attacks assigned to F11/F12 are actually bound to a couple buttons on the right side of my 9-button Logitech G300 mouse. While I've found that works well, I may still consider one of these "MMO mice" with the 9-12 thumb buttons on the left side.

Peek at mounts. The one at right is a high-level mount, and that player was an L50.

The Vanguard and Gunslinger get ogling (not really, but it looks that way, no? ). I'm not going to comment on my Taral V Flashpoint experience with this group except to say I wouldn't try the later Flashpoints until you have a team a few levels above what the Flashpoint is labeled as. I think that would help ensure a more pleasant experience...

You do eventually get to interact with your companions as a group aboard your ship. I kinda wish we could also selectively disable helmet visuals on companions -- if we could, I'd probably disable Corso's and Risha's (Wookies don't seem to change visually except maybe with belts). "Blackjack Blackjack" seems silly (Legacy surname choice), but I figured I'd want that in my nameplate and folks that know me by that ID would see it's me. I've run into a couple other players doing the same.

There's an option to change it so that it says "Captain Blackjack" as the character name and then right below it, it will say on a different line "The Blackjack Legacy". Bioware says this is a per-character option. So your other characters can have Blackjack as their last name (if desired), whereas Captain Blackjack can just have "The Blackjack Legacy" listed (or I believe there's an option to turn off legacy display altogether).

You do eventually get to interact with your companions as a group aboard your ship. I kinda wish we could also selectively disable helmet visuals on companions -- if we could, I'd probably disable Corso's and Risha's (Wookies don't seem to change visually except maybe with belts). "Blackjack Blackjack" seems silly (Legacy surname choice), but I figured I'd want that in my nameplate and folks that know me by that ID would see it's me. I've run into a couple other players doing the same.

There's an option to change it so that it says "Captain Blackjack" as the character name and then right below it, it will say on a different line "The Blackjack Legacy". Bioware says this is a per-character option. So your other characters can have Blackjack as their last name (if desired), whereas Captain Blackjack can just have "The Blackjack Legacy" listed (or I believe there's an option to turn off legacy display altogether).

Completely agree on disabling companion helmets.

Thanks, I'll look through the Preferences more closely to see if I can find a setting like that.

You do eventually get to interact with your companions as a group aboard your ship. I kinda wish we could also selectively disable helmet visuals on companions -- if we could, I'd probably disable Corso's and Risha's (Wookies don't seem to change visually except maybe with belts). "Blackjack Blackjack" seems silly (Legacy surname choice), but I figured I'd want that in my nameplate and folks that know me by that ID would see it's me. I've run into a couple other players doing the same.

There's an option to change it so that it says "Captain Blackjack" as the character name and then right below it, it will say on a different line "The Blackjack Legacy". Bioware says this is a per-character option. So your other characters can have Blackjack as their last name (if desired), whereas Captain Blackjack can just have "The Blackjack Legacy" listed (or I believe there's an option to turn off legacy display altogether).

Completely agree on disabling companion helmets.

Thanks, I'll look through the Preferences more closely to see if I can find a setting like that.

Tauntaun! Can't ride 'em. Sigh. Probably the graphics would cut through the character models. They are animated, and later in Hoth you see them roaming around a little bit here and there.

From the Balmorra (however it's spelled) bonus series. For the love of Yoda, don't try to tackle this HP-sink monstrosity (a Champion boss) with anything less than a full team. After about 5 wipes with this increasingly loud and angry guy, I decided logging out was the better part of valor. It should be labeled Heroic4 but as a bonus quest, it has no labeling like that, though the fact it's in a Heroic zone should be a clue.